Oatmeal Marmalade Squares Recipe & Mini Tea

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy Afternoon Tea? The tradition, the rituals, the sheer decadence of it?

…Do I even have to mention how the concept does not mesh with Nutrisystem or watching one’s weight?

I’ve been flirting with an idea I call Mini Teas. The idea is that I can still sit down and enjoy both sweet and savoury items with a lovely pot of tea, while sticking to the my diet…excuse me: my new eating patterns!

My intent is to put together a collection of recipes which I can use for snacks or “mini meals” that:

consist of at least 2 items – one sweet and one savoury;

are 250 calories or less; and

don’t take more than 30 minutes (not counting baking time) to put together.

Sticking with the idea of small portion recipes that I’ve started looking into in anticipation of eventually weaning ourselves off of Nutrisystem, I’ve been poking around for ‘from scratch’ recipes for use in kid’s EasyBake Ovens®. I’ve adapted a few for use in a toaster or standard oven using mini bakeware and double-checked the nutrition using MasterCook to make sure the calories per portion are acceptable.

This is the first such recipe that I’ve had the opportunity to test, and it turned out beautifully! Try it as the SmartCarb portion of of a snack, or as a Flex Meal dessert.

* I actually have a measuring spoon labelled a ‘smidgen’ which works out to 1/32 tsp. You can see an example of the set here. Watch out, though, I’ve seen a similar set labelled as ‘Spice Spoons’ which had 4 pieces, but it was pretty obvious in comparing it to a standard 1/4 teaspoon that set didn’t include the same 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32 tsp that mine has! And yes, there is a use for such sets beyond novelty mini bakeware – I’ve seen recipes for 4 or 8 servings calling for ingredients such as Asafoetida where you wouldn’t want any more than a 1/6 or 1/32 of a teaspoon…